15 June 2014

Twitter COO Out (video); Xiaomi an Apple Killer

Twitter Is Simply a Bad User Experience: McNamee: Video - Bloomberg: (Allow video to load after clicking play)Twitter said Chief Operating Officer Ali Rowghani resigned, in the biggest executive departure since the microblogging company’s initial public offering last year. Elevation Partners Roger McNamee speaks on Bloomberg Television’s “Bloomberg West.” (Source: Bloomberg, June 12th)Why Twitter's COO Is Out - Business Insider:....According to a person familiar with the situation, Rowghani leaving the company is "really about product, and the speed of the product." All product decisions had been flowing into Rowghani. CEO Dick Costolo wanted those decisions to come to him directly....A different source familiar with the inner workings of Twitter explained the move to us by saying, "I think there was a sense that Ali didn't have product instincts, didn't know how to successfully win at least two problems: messaging and topics."Messaging has exploded in popularity. WhatsApp, for instance, sold to Facebook for $19 billion. Our industry source says, "When you talk to Dick about messaging, he's like, 'Sigh, that should have been us.'..."Xiaomi Is A Big Threat To Apple - Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) | Seeking Alpha: "...I believe that Xiaomi poses a bigger threat than Amazon's (AMZN) upcoming Android smartphone. Xiaomi, the world's fastest growing phone vendor, has surpassed Apple (AAPL) in China. Canalys Report puts Xiaomi as the third biggest phone vendor in China in Q1 2014. Copycatting the iPhone has made Xiaomi, a four-year old company, the 6th largest global seller of smartphones. The rapid rise of Xiaomi is due in part to Apple's complacent attitude towards it. While Apple took Samsung to court for copying some of the features of the iPhone, Apple allowed Xiaomi to become a $10 billion company by selling iPhone clones using the Android OS. Xiaomi hired Google veteran Hugo Barra last year. Barra is spearheading Xiaomi's expansion in 10 countries this year...."F.C.C. Begins Investigation Into Quality of Internet Download Speeds - NYTimes.com: ",,,,Tom Wheeler, the F.C.C. chairman, said on Friday that the purpose of the investigation was to see whether consumers were getting the speed and quality of service that Internet service providers had promised. The inquiry resulted in part from more than 19,000 public comments submitted to the F.C.C. in recent weeks urging it to protect Internet freedom, he said...."Judge calls out LinkedIn over spammy invitations, says emails can harm reputation — Tech News and Analysis: "...The complaint relates to a feature of LinkedIn that invites new users to “Connect with people you know” and existing users to “See who you already know,” and then looks for matches based on their email address books. The users’ email contacts then receive an automated email, and then two follow-up ones...."

Comcast WiFi Hotspot Public - Business Insider: :" . . . if you don't want your Comcast XFINITY WiFi available to anyone with a Comcast password within spitting distance of your home, there is a solution. According to Comcast's website, users can disable XFINITY public WiFi in just a few steps:

Log into your Comcast account at customer.comcast.com.

Click on "Users & Preferences."

Click on “Manage XFINITY WiFi.”

Users can then choose to disable their WiFi routers from public use and save changes."

BlackBerry Vs. Samsung Android phones: app gap still huge | BGR: "... In particular, Umiastowski says that he absolutely needs to have access to the full suite of Google’s biggest apps such as Google Now, Gmail, Google Maps and Calendar. In fact, Umiastowski says that he loves these apps so much that he’s willing to tolerate what he considers to be an inferior overall user experience with Android just to be able to use them. This means that to win him back, BlackBerry will need to figure out a way to make Google’s apps an integral part of its platform. “I have to wonder what it would take for BlackBerry to just sign a deal with Google to have access to the Play store and all of the awesome Google apps inside it,” he explains. “I can’t imagine that BlackBerry would actually need to run the Android OS instead of their QNX-based OS. Samsung and others skin the UI anyway, so why would it really matter if the OS was actually Android or just capable of running Android apps?”..."Why Elon Musk is not Henry FordWashington PostTesla CEO Elon Musk waves during a rally at the Tesla factory in Fremont, California in 2012. (Paul Sakuma/AP). On Thursday, Elon Musk, founder of Tesla, said the company won't sue others that use its patents “in good faith.” That's rare, if not unprecedented ...

Galaxy Tab S: Samsung takes on the iPadTelegraph.co.ukSamsung unveiled its latest bid to take on Apple's iPad at the Madison Square Gardens in New York this week. The emphasis was on a thin, lightweight design – and a screen that is unmatched anywhere else in the market. Samsung's aim is to provide the ...

NASA's New Smell-O-scope Experiment Sniffs Saturn's Moon TitanGizmodo AustraliaGood news, everyone! NASA has came up with an interplanetary smell-o-scope experiment, processing data from the Cassini spacecraft and reproducing the smell of another world right here on Earth: Saturn's moon Titan. (Spoiler: It smells like farts mixed ...

Enormous 'Ocean' Discovered Below Earth's Surface (Video)The Epoch TimesScientists have discovered vast water reserves near Earth's mantle, a finding that could reshape our understanding of where Earth's water came from. According to a new study by a group of U.S. geophysicists, a reservoir of water three times the volume of all ...